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“If we want to become a blockchain island, we don’t have to ask permission”
Four years ago, a tech start-up co-founded by Maltese entrepreneur Max Thake had just attracted €750,000 in investment and was looking to reach €5 million.
At the time, Thake spoke passionately about the start-up’s blockchain-based technology called “peaq” and said he and his colleagues were “looking to the future.”
The future is now, and judging by recent developments, the platform has continued to grow.
Peaq recently secured $35 million in two rounds of public and private funding and is now valued at about a third of a billion dollars.
Commenting on the meteoric rise of the technology, Thake, who lives as a digital nomad, said it is “crazy to see it grow so much”, but said it is “still only a fraction of what we foresee”.
Peaq is a network-building technology that connects users to crowdsourced information and services by connecting and monetizing Internet-connected devices.
Thake and his colleagues think peaq won’t just be a successful venture; they believe it has the potential to change the world by ushering in a new era of democratized, user-owned industries.
And judging by the latest round of funding, they’re not the only ones. So, what is the secret to their continued success?
“Resilience; we had to go to hell and back to make this a success,” said Thake, adding that he hoped peaq’s success could serve as an inspiration for young tech enthusiasts in Malta.
Stressing the importance of “vision, passion and adaptability”, the young entrepreneur said that he and his colleagues have learned how to “take the hits and make the necessary changes”.
But since blockchain technology – a decentralized sequential list of encrypted records called “blocks” that can be used to store information such as financial transactions – is complex and likely still viewed with skepticism, what has been the reaction of family and friends to his feat?
“Sometimes I was almost like, ‘oh, how cute,’ especially in my 20s,” he said, but he noted that as the technology became more widely known and start-ups grew, attitudes have changed.
Asked if he had always gravitated towards technology, Thake said his co-founder Leonard Dorlöchter was “the technology guy”, with his role “more on the creative side and setting the long-term vision for the company …”
So what is peaq?
Describing the technology behind the platform as the “next evolutionary step of the internet,” Thake explained how peaq connects users and devices across vast networks that offer crowdsourcing alternatives to company-driven solutions.
Such alternatives could offer services such as ride hailing, communal 3D printing and goods delivery, provide traffic and pollution information, and even create crowdsourcing infrastructure such as WiFi and 5G networks, he said.
Peaq-powered networks offer information and services to users, putting the power – and money – back into the hands of those providing the service.
The more a user contributes to the network, the more they are rewarded in peaq tokens, which give the user more say in the development of the network and which can also be exchanged for regular currency, he explained.
Think cooperatives, but high-tech.
“In the past, the internet put power in the hands of a few, and today there is huge inequality in the world… but peaq doesn’t rely on Google or other big companies,” Thake said.
This technology is about giving up power, giving it back to the people
Using ride hailing as an example, the entrepreneur said that a network offering a service like Uber would be able to do so more competitively by avoiding the commissions charged by such platforms.
“The network will be able to undermine companies like Uber at a rate they can’t compete with, essentially using their own business model against them,” he said, noting that, unlike existing platforms, drivers would earn money while owning a part of the network.
The old versus the new
“The long-term vision is to fuel the ‘economy of things,’” Thake said, referring to an economic model in which devices connected to the Internet – the so-called “internet of things”, including health trackers and charging stations, for example – generate cryptocurrency as they provide data to others.
Emphasizing that peaq focuses on providing “real-life solutions”, Thake pointed to an app called Silencio, which monitors background noise and combines it with readings from other users to help people make informed decisions about where to live or go on holiday.
As the app collects data, the user is rewarded with tokens that can then be traded or sold similar to shares of a traditional company.
So, what makes peaq different from a traditional company?
“This technology means giving up power, giving it back to the people,” Thake said, in contrast to established models in which, as a company grows, a controlling minority continues to wield most of the influence.
Controversies
Despite the promise of blockchain technology, and in particular cryptocurrencies, an offshoot of blockchain, the tech world has been rocked by a series of high-profile scandals involving the technology in recent years.
In March, disgraced former cryptocurrency genius Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $11 billion in damages after being found guilty of defrauding investors.
Are they worried about Thake?
“It’s annoying; every time things like this happen, we think ‘here we go again,'” he said, but stressed that he was confident that despite the short-term damage, such scandals “won’t sink the industry,” warning against blind investments in new technologies.
And while Malta’s forays into the blockchain world haven’t always gone well – its infamous “blockchain island” marketing campaign was derided as a flop after failing to attract tech start-ups – Thake doesn’t think a guided approach from government is the right one and instead advocates a crowd-led embrace of crowdsourcing technology.
If we want to become a blockchain island, we don’t have to ask permission.”
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